His office door clicked open. A man in a gray suit stood there, holding a tablet.
Overwrite the byte with 9C and set a flag to TRUE . But 9C was the opcode for a hard reset of the thruster alignment. The flag meant "execute on next telemetry ping."
That wasn't just a random glitch. 0x7F4A was a known location in the firmware. It was the checksum block for the attitude control system. Change one byte there, and the satellite wouldn't flip a solar panel—it would flip its entire orientation, pointing its main thruster directly at the International Seabed Communications Array.